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Wild creatures roam Flayl's world. Some can be weakened and captured. A few can be befriended. The ones you bond with fight beside you, level with you, and — when you train it right — carry you into the next encounter.
From first encounter to a fully-leveled companion, every bond in Flayl runs through the same pipeline. The path branches at the second step depending on whether the creature is the kind you fight or the kind you feed.
You find a wild creature in the world. The framework spawns a creature with its species traits, AI behavior settings, limb health, and a danger-level readout you can read off the Creature World UI floating above it.
The creature's class declares one of three Taming Categories: Passive (approachable, fed by hand), Combat (must be weakened before capture), or Boss (raid-tier, with permadeath consequences). The category decides how you initiate the bond.
For Combat creatures, you damage them through the normal combat pipeline — bullets, melee, throwables — until their Limb Health and total HP cross the configured Capture Threshold. For Passive creatures, you walk up and trigger a hold-interaction (Feed) that builds Affinity over time.
Combat path: with the creature weakened, an instant Capture interaction routes through the capture system, which evaluates eligibility, rolls capture probability against capture resistance + weakspot bonuses + skill modifiers, and either succeeds or fails (with a brief immunity window on failure). Passive path: feeding ticks Affinity to 1.0, at which point the creature converts cleanly with no roll.
On a successful capture or completed feed, the creature disappears and a stored creature item lands in your inventory. The item carries every persistent piece of state — class, level, quality tier, current HP percentage, ability slots, combat history, and revival cooldowns — in the stored creature item.
You equip the creature into one of your companion slots (you start with one slot; skill-tree investment unlocks slot two and slot three). Summoning spawns the creature at your side; only one creature can be active at a time, and swapping triggers a configurable swap cooldown.
The summoned creature follows the active Combat Mode you've set — Passive, Defensive, Aggressive, Stay, Follow, or Move-To. Its AI runs on a smart behavior brain, picks targets via a Threat Table, and routes its damage and status hits through the same Limb Health system players use.
Damage dealt and kills made grant the creature XP (scaled by your skill-tree XP bonus). Each level can unlock new abilities from the creature's ability progression list. Quality tier acts as a permanent multiplier on stat ranges and ability scaling.
If the creature drops to zero HP it enters a Downed state and goes on a revival cooldown. Common-through-Legendary creatures revive at a configurable cost. Boss creatures permadeath — both the creature dying and the player owner dying while it's out causes a permanent loss.
Every creature class declares exactly one Taming Category at authoring time. The category determines whether you can talk to it, fight it, or both — and what's at stake if it dies.
Approachable creatures. You walk up, trigger a hold-Feed interaction, and over the course of multiple feedings you build Affinity from 0 to 1. Filling the bar bonds the creature with no roll. Each food type maps to a per-type affinity gain — feeding a creature its preferred food fills the bar much faster than generic rations.
The default for most creatures. You weaken the target through the normal damage pipeline until it crosses the Capture Threshold (configurable health percentage plus optional limb-blackout requirement), then trigger an instant Capture interaction with a Capture Device. The framework rolls Capture Probability against the creature's resistance and the device's strength. Failed captures grant brief Capture Immunity.
In Design
Raid-tier encounters. Boss creatures roll the same Combat-style capture pipeline, but on a much harder difficulty curve and with one critical twist: permadeath. If the boss dies, or if the bonded boss owner dies while it's summoned, the creature is permanently lost from the database. Boss encounters themselves are still being authored.
Each creature type declares two classification axes — a Primary Role (what it does in a fight) and a Secondary Type (what its broad behavior is built around). These labels drive AI decisions, slot eligibility, and how the framework prioritizes the creature against your build.
Frontline body. Holds Threat, soaks damage, opens space for the rest of the squad. Pairs naturally with the Defensive combat mode.
Damage dealer. Pushes the creature's offensive abilities to the front of the rotation. Pairs naturally with Aggressive mode against a designated target.
Buffer / utility. Boosts allies, debuffs enemies, opens windows the rest of the squad capitalizes on.
Routes restoration through the Limb Health system. Heals route the same way damage does — auto-targeted to the most-damaged limb unless explicitly directed.
The "everything else" role. Crowd-control specialists, gatherers tuned for combat double-duty, and creatures whose value is what they enable rather than what they hit.
Rideable. Carries one or more riders in defined seats with role-specific control rights. (Mount system in design — see the Mounts section below.)
Combat-forward. Will engage threats when the combat mode allows, with an emphasis on damage output abilities.
Holds ground. Excels at threat generation and survival. Naturally pairs with the Defensive and Stay modes.
Resource-collection-focused. Wired to find and pull harvestable nodes during downtime. (Gathering task in design.)
Buff / heal-focused. Pairs with the Support and Healer roles to amplify squad effectiveness.
An active companion is always running in one of six explicit Combat Modes. The mode is shared across all players in the world, drives the AI's behavior selection, and can be hot-swapped at any time without dismissing the creature.
No combat. The creature will not attack, will not retaliate. Useful when you need it close but disengaged — exploration, looting, hostile-zone observation.
Retaliate only. The creature will not initiate, but will engage anything that hits it or threatens its owner. The default when you want a peaceful path that still defends itself.
Attack on sight. Hostile targets within the creature's Aggression Radius are engaged the moment they're detected. Use with caution in mixed zones — friendly fire and unintended pulls happen.
Hold position. The creature plants at its current location and defends from there. Keeps its Threat reactions but won't pursue. Good for choke-point defense.
The default. The creature trails its owner with a configurable follow offset and Leash Distance. Switches to engagement behavior automatically when threats appear.
Direct command. Send the creature to a specific point on the map; it will path there and hold once it arrives. Switches back to Follow on completion or on a recall command.
Each captured creature carries a permanent Quality Tier (rolled at capture time, never changes) and a live Status (changes constantly with damage, downtime, and revival cooldowns).
The reference quality. Stat rolls land in the lower half of the configured ranges. Lowest revival cost.
Better stat rolls; modest ability scaling bump. The "good pet" tier.
Stat rolls weighted to the upper half. Unlocks more abilities along the level curve.
Top-shelf stat ranges, accelerated ability progression, higher revival cost.
The ceiling. Maxed stat rolls, full ability roster on the progression curve, the steepest revival cost. Boss-tier creatures only roll Legendary.
Full or near-full health. Ready to summon, swap, or fight.
Low health but still functional. Continues to fight; won't auto-dismiss.
Reached zero limb-effective health. Cannot fight; eligible for Revival once the cooldown elapses and you spend the configured revival items.
Recently revived or recently downed. Cannot be summoned until the timer expires. Skill-tree investment can shorten this window.
Boss-tier only. Permanent loss. The stored item is removed from your collection on the next save.
A capture attempt is not a coin flip — it's a structured roll. The capture system runs eligibility, then computes a probability from a stack of clearly-defined modifiers, then resolves with a server-side randomness roll. Every layer is configurable per creature.
The maximum HP percentage a Combat-tameable creature can be at and still be capture-eligible. Configured per creature type (default 20%). Above the threshold, the capture interaction is disabled outright.
Some creature types also require one or more specific limbs to reach zero HP (a "blackout") before they're eligible. Forces players to break the right joints rather than just spray bullets at the torso.
The creature's base difficulty, 0.0 (easy) to 1.0 (very hard). Set per creature type; legendary creatures sit near the top.
If the class flags it, recent weakspot hits multiply the success chance. The configured weakspot capture multiplier (default ~1.5x) applies once for the recent weakspot-hit count window.
The thrown / used capture device contributes its own multiplier. Better devices roll higher quality on the captured creature, too.
Investment in the Capture Chance Bonus skill node adds a flat probability bump on top of the device + weakspot stack.
Every creature in the framework — wild and bonded alike — runs a threat table. Anything that affects the creature deposits a weighted threat entry against the responsible attacker. The creature's AI picks its current target by reading the top of that table.
The default driver. Direct damage dealt to the creature contributes threat proportional to the damage amount.
Healing an ally currently fighting this creature pulls the healer onto the table. Classic tank-pull behavior, applied to creatures.
Entering the creature's aggression radius generates a baseline threat tick — enough to put a target on the table even before any damage is dealt.
Explicit taunt abilities push a forced threat spike. Used by tank-class creatures to peel attention onto themselves.
Buffing an ally engaged with this creature contributes residual threat to the buffer.
Hurting a creature that's part of the same Pack as the threatened creature shares threat across pack members. The pack remembers who hurt one of them.
Forced-targeting abilities pin the creature to a specific target regardless of accumulated threat values. Used sparingly — bypasses the table entirely.
Many wild creatures are configured to spawn and hunt as Packs. The pack system coordinates threat sharing, target focus, attack-slot rotation, and formation movement among members of the same pack.
When one pack member is hit or alerted, the threat is shared with the rest of the pack. Aggro one wolf, you've aggroed the pack.
When a pack enters combat, members propagate a coordinated alert that drives the rest into combat against the same target.
The pack limits how many members can be in melee on the target at once. Excess members orbit, flank, and rotate in as slots open. Prevents creatures from clipping into each other on a single target and keeps positioning legible to players.
The pack system periodically updates formations — leader-follower offsets, flanking positions, and combat-state coordination — so packs feel coherent rather than like a clump of independent agents.
In Design The Mount System is partially built — mount configuration, multi-seat data, and seat-attachment syncing are in place; the riding-and-fighting loop and most of the polish work are still being authored. Expect adjustments as the system finalizes.
Controls movement and the mount's primary abilities. The seat with the steering wheel.
Weapon / ability seat. Restricted from steering, granted a configured ability set tailored to fighting from the back of the mount.
Along for the ride. Limited ability access — useful for transport, raid relocation, and squad-mobility plays.
Creatures don't have their own bespoke damage rules. They share the same Limb Health system players use — both as targets and as instigators. A bullet, a melee swing, a grenade fragment, or a creature claw all run through the same evaluation, so balance feedback is consistent across the board.
Damage routed into a creature lands on a specific limb. The limb decides resistances, multipliers, and whether the hit is a weakspot. Auto-targeting picks the most-damaged limb for unaimed sources; targeted hits route to the specific limb that was struck.
Bleed, burn, poison, fracture, stun, and any other status authored in the system can be applied into the bond framework — either as a flat status (stacks + duration) or as a damage-over-time variant that ticks for a configured total damage budget over time.
Creature attacks declare their own status payloads — a venomous strike auto-applies a poison stack on hit; a heavy swing pushes a stagger. The framework reads the attack's configuration and applies the right statuses automatically.
Significant hits trigger a hit-reaction montage — light or heavy depending on damage thresholds, with a configurable cooldown to prevent reaction-spam-locking the creature. Movement is briefly suspended for the reaction window. Bosses can opt out of reactions to prevent stagger-locking endgame fights.
Every damaging interaction updates the creature's combat history — total damage dealt, damage taken, healing done. The data persists with the stored creature item between sessions.
Damage dealt and kills made grant the creature XP. Kill credit also routes a configured XP reward to the owning player's skill tree, scaled by creature level — so fighting alongside a strong companion levels you, too.
Creatures are full participants in Flayl's temporal dilation system. When a Temporal Grenade detonates a slow-time field over a wild pack — or over an enemy player's bonded companion — the dilation factor scales every relevant aspect of the creature's behavior, not just its movement.
Max speed and acceleration are scaled by the dilation factor on every movement frame. A creature inside a slow-time field crawls at the same proportion the field dictates.
The creature's global animation rate scale is set to the dilation factor. Wind-ups, attack swings, and idle loops all play at the field's tempo.
Bleeds, burns, poisons, and other status effects on the creature have their tick speed adjusted by the field. Hex Appeal-style "speed up the DoT" interactions affect creatures the same way they affect player targets.
Hit-reaction countdowns, stun durations, and pathing-blocked detection windows all scale with the field's dilation factor. Slowing the creature genuinely makes everything internal slower, not just its visible motion.
Turning and locomotion smoothing scale with dilation, so a slow creature also turns slowly — no jarring snap-rotations to compensate for slowed translation.
Pack-circling angular motion and combat-spacing logic also scale with dilation, so packs caught in a temporal field don't desync against each other.
The Bond Framework reads its skill-tree investment from a dedicated Taming skill bank — separate from the combat archetype trees but cross-queryable from any of them. The hooks are explicit and shipped:
You start with one equipped companion slot. Investment in the slot-2 and slot-3 nodes unlocks the second and third equipped-creature slots, letting you carry up to three different companions and swap between them on the fly.
Reduces the cooldown applied when swapping which equipped creature is active. Stacks with multiple ranks where defined.
Adds a flat probability bump to every capture roll. Makes a difference primarily on high-resistance and boss-tier targets.
Lowers the number of revival items needed to bring a downed companion back. Scales with quality tier — cheaper revives matter most on Epic and Legendary creatures.
Improves the bond's damage / utility scaling. Used by ability progression curves that read the owner's bond-strength rank.
Adds +5% XP per rank to the creature's gain. Stacks across ranks. The framework reads the owner's max rank across all active trees and applies the bonus on every XP grant.
The combat archetypes (Berserker / Bullseye / Hex Appeal / Stitch Witch / Stalker / Warden / Handyman) shape how your attacks land — and because creature damage runs through the same Limb Health system, those archetype effects naturally apply when you're the one dealing the hit. There are no companion-specific archetype branches at the moment; the Taming bank above is where bond-direct progression lives.
Stored creatures are real inventory items. They sit in your collection, live in Flayl's inventory system, and travel through every existing inventory-aware system (sorting, persistence, transfers). The item itself carries the creature's full state — class, level, quality, abilities, combat history — between sessions.
The creature's damage handler takes any incoming damage and routes it to the right limb, and reports it back out as a running combat history. The same handler covers healing, status effects, kill XP, and hit-reaction triggering — one component owns the whole damage-flow contract.
In Design
The Throwables Framework declares an interface for spawning creatures from a throwable detonation — a thrown item that, on impact, can spawn one or more wild creatures with a configured initial bond level and follow-owner flag. The hook is in place; the throwable archetypes that use it are still being authored.
Creatures register with the Temporal Dilation system. Any field that slows a region — temporal grenades, area abilities, environmental hazards — automatically scales the creature's movement, animation, status ticks, and reaction timers without any per-creature setup.
A real-time bond system has to handle wild populations on the order of thousands of dormant creatures plus hundreds of active companions across an extraction-MMO sized world. The framework is built around a small set of explicit techniques that keep the cost predictable.
Creatures run their behavior at one of four detail levels — Full (every frame), Reduced (5 Hz), Minimal (1 Hz), or Dormant (no behavior at all) — based on distance to the nearest player. Far creatures pay almost no CPU; nearby creatures get the full simulation.
Creatures far enough out enter a Stasis state. They're suspended (no animation, no perception, no AI tick) until a player approaches and they wake back up. Lets the world hold a high creature count without paying for it on the frame budget.
The capture eval, threat-table updates, detail-level evaluation, animation playback, mode transitions, and AI updates are individually profiled. The framework's hot loops are visible to the engine's built-in performance tools.
Pack threat sharing, attack-slot rotation, and formation updates run through a single coordinated system on a strict performance budget — packs scale by member count, not by O(N²) chatter.
Damage, status checks, and bleed/burn/poison rule evaluation all go through the project's batched Limb Health system. A whole pack hitting one player resolves as a single tight tick rather than N independent damage passes.
In Design
The framework's master plan is built on Flayl's modern network layer with a custom filter / prioritizer pair that uses fast spatial lookups for relevance checks. The performance budgets are reserved; the filter and prioritizer themselves are still being authored.